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My Orange Contempra

Okay, here it is my latest find and of course it is orange. It seems that of late my eyes have this uncanny ability to seek out anything orange. While visiting East End Estates on Kingston Road located in Toronto’s east end (see blog July 14th) I came across what I thought was the ‘jewel’ of the shop that day. I found an ‘Eames-inspired’, orange, touch tone Contempra® telephone. Very mod! The Northern Electric Contempratelephone was first introduced in 1968 in a rotary dial version, with the touch tone version being released a few years later. Inspired by the popularity of Sweden’s very cool Ericofon®, Northern Electric (Bell Canada manufacturing subsidiary) introduced the Contempra which was the first Canadian-designed telephone. It was a very ‘ground-breaking’ style with the dial on the handset instead of the base and was available in a rainbow of colours but none best represents the ‘70’s era like the orange version. I was so thrilled with my find so I showed it to my neighbour – a young, hip, very current, twenty-something who took a look at the very orange, heavy telephone with a long cord that plugs into a phone jack and said, “Why?…..Is it mobile?!”